Gotta agree With all the AJ Posts in this thread. Time and time again when someone put it strong on him he faltered. Without all the hype and promotion all there really is, is a plastic version of Derek Chisora. Plastic Chisora.
Never lost, did he? Got a brain clot beating the long time cw champ if I remember right. He was also never hyped anything like Anderson, or many others. Seth Mitchell was a much bigger hype job.
Ironically, Chisora is more overrated than Joshua. Chisora has never delivered at a world level and was knocked spark out by Whyte, and a cruiserweight, yet people treat him like a bogeyman.
Chisora is a funny one... He's typically considered the definitive gatekeeper, but he's been consistently competitive against contenders (even if he often lost) he gave everyone a hard fight - moreso than plenty who were (and in some cases still are) considered to have been above him. In that sense, he's underrated, yet looking purely at the number of losses you could be forgiven for thinking the opposite. There are fighters who were far more overhyped. Joshua I think these days is probably underrated a little bit if anything - he had his flaws, but he fought (and usually beat) most of the best around in his era... You listen to some on here and you'd think he was a total fraud who never beat anyone particularly good - the irony when the other big name champion for a long period, who ducked him consistently, was very arguably precisely that.
I still don't see it with Chisora. The Usyk fight wasn't anywhere near as close as people make out. Haye decimated him, and he lost every round to Vitali Klitschko, and he's treated like he'd be a champion in any other era. The problem with the term "hypejob" is that it means different things to different people. For me, it's someone who was talked about as potentially world-class as a pro and then got exposed, someone like David Price or Audley Harrison, for instance. But I also have a problem using the term "hypejob" for pro boxers who have Olympic medals sitting on their shelves at home, especially when many people calling them bums or hypejobs haven't even stepped foot in a boxing gym or had an amateur fight. Not to mention, in Joshua's case, multiple world title belts, an Olympic gold medal, and a world silver medal, as well as solid wins over the likes of Wlad K, Parker, and Whyte. Joshua is overrated, but calling him a hype job is pretty wild to me when he literally got to the very top of the mountain amateur and pro, and beat multiple top 10-ranked opponents.
We're talking about a top tier ATG in Usyk, who said Chisora was hard work, and two competent legit contenders... Losing to those doesn't make him trash, it makes him not on their level - which very few ever are, it's a tiny tiny percentage that get to be that good. I can't say I've ever seen people suggest he's been unlucky not to become a champion, either, but I'll take your word for it. True... To some it's about underproven prospects who get exposed instead of making it, to others it's about fighters getting rated far above what their resumes prove. To others it can be both, or something else entirely. Sure, as above, sometimes prospects get ridiculously hyped and never achieve much (or get exposed). I don't have an issue with that if it's applied once they're done - while they still have time to turn it around, it can seem premature. It depends... As pros, plenty of Olympic medallists don't cut it at contender level - if these fighters get hyped up to be the next big thing and then either prove nothing or prove they're nowhere near (well, you mentioned Audley...) then they can still be hypejobs. An Olympic medallist who gets hyped up as an atg puncher and #1 in the division by many, yet never beats a single proven contender? Yea, that fighter would be a hypejob in my book. Agreed - Joshua has faults, and for a brief period was overrated (if anything the opposite is true of the narrative around his career now). Joshua isn't a hype job... And it's wild that so many resort to singling him out for that descriptor when the 4th belt was held hostage by as textbook a hypejob as you could hope to demonstrate the point with. Still, it makes for discussions, I guess.